


jejune

by armethaumaturgy



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: (me kinkey), Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Miscommunication, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Very Serious Conversations(tm), and dox feels terrible bc he doesnt know why, as in immortal doesnt want to fuck dox bc he looks like a kid, attempted handjob, very briefly mentioned p-dophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 11:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14308164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armethaumaturgy/pseuds/armethaumaturgy
Summary: Dox stands in the doorway, holding on to the frame for a second as he watches his lovers lean on each other, completely engrossed in their conversation. He itches to cross the few meters separating them and sprawl across the sofa with them, but he forces that itch down.It’s not his place anymore, he knows. So he retreats upstairs, too silent in the already silent building.





	jejune

**Author's Note:**

> hi im gay n love suffering

Dox turns over, letting out a small noise as he emerges back in the waking world. The blanket is warm where it is bunched by his feet, but Immortal’s chest is warmer where he nuzzles his head into the redhead’s sleeping shirt. He can tell the other is awake by the tiny snort he hears above.

“Good morning,” he mutters, voice raspy from sleep. He scoots a bit up to plant a kiss Immortal’s lips, unheeding of morning breath.

“Mm, morning,” is Immortal’s sluggish reply as he burrows his cheek into the pillow.

The side behind Dox is cold, meaning Herrsh is already up and about, but he’s more interested in his other, currently present partner at the moment. Especially when he can feel a certain body part poking his thigh.

Dox’s lips quirk up into a grin and he slips a hand between them, scooting down Immortal’s body, down his taut stomach and into the waistband of his shorts to curl around his half-hard cock. His hand is barely big enough to wrap around the girth and it somehow manages to send a spark through him.

“Someone’s eager early,” he laughs not unkindly, but Immortal’s hand wraps around his wrist and pulls his hand out of his shorts. Dox quirks his head in confusion; after all, Infi — Immortal — has never been one to decline such an offer before, especially one this bold.

“Gotta go shower,” Immortal grumbles, moving away to get up and head to the bathroom without even a look back.

Dox is left alone on the suddenly too-big-for-him bed, looking at the closed bathroom door with a mixture of confusion and hurt swirling deep in his belly.

Had he done something wrong? Overstepped some invisible boundary he hadn’t known was there? Is Immortal angry at him?

He finds no answer to any of the questions running through his mind, so he does his best to push them away and make sure he’s more careful next time.

* * *

The next manages to — somehow? he’s not sure here — go even worse. He returns from Echo’s place with a lollipop she’d given him (they’d gotten that close over the years) stuck between his lips, humming a tune. His spirits were high, and then he found his lovers making out in the kitchen.

Not that that was a bad thing, of course not, but when they’d taken notice of him standing there, watching them with rapt attention, Immortal had pulled away and, red faced as he was, chuckled and said, “I guess that’s enough, haha.”

Dox had watched him retreat into the bedroom; neither his nor Herrscher’s arousal had been very discreet. Dox didn’t dare ask this time, just biting through his lollipop and chewing at the shards as he left Herrscher to go after Immortal.

He can’t even count the days they haven’t had sex. Well, he can, but he’s not going to hurt himself that way.

What he  _can_ count, though, is the number of days he hadn’t been kissed. Well, again, not quite correct, but he can very easily count the number of days he hadn’t been kissed _on the lips_. The others just… stopped doing it.

If he’s lucky, Immortal would kiss his cheek, or Herrscher would lean down and kiss his forehead, but that’s all he’d get. Even asking for a kiss would yield the very same results, so he doesn’t bother anymore.

He fills the void in his chest with chocolate, with helping Echo, with shopping for parts he doesn’t need, with missions he’s not needed on, with trying to find the thing he’d done wrong. He can’t find it, and it only drives it further home.

He wants to be held, wants the cold seeping into his bones to go away, but some masochistic part of him forces him to stay in bed, curled up and shivering. He wouldn’t be given what he wants anyway.

* * *

Dox stands in the doorway, holding on to the frame for a second as he watches his lovers lean on each other, completely engrossed in their conversation. He itches to cross the few meters separating them and sprawl across the sofa with them, but he forces that itch down.

It’s not his place anymore, he knows. So he retreats upstairs, too silent in the already silent building.

* * *

The bed — his bed, the small one in his room, not their shared one — becomes a sanctuary to him. The blanket is warm around him and the pillow doesn’t ask why he stays there so much, why he curls up and twists the blanket between his feet. His old room is as messy as his life feels, with unfinished blueprints strewn about the table, El shards piling up between them and rolled in the corners where they’d fallen and he didn’t bother picking them up.

His suit sits on a mannequin propped in its own corner, as if taunting him. He’d tried to prevent this, he really had.

But no matter how differently he’d talked or if he’d even withdrawn from affection himself, Herrsh and Immo had always ended up slowly disliking him. He supposes it was bound to happen eventually; they’d lose interest in him sooner or later. No one could stand him if they learned all he’d done.

He’d thought he had come to terms with it.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t, as it would seem.

The door opens with a creak he’d gotten used to at this old place and he panics for some reason, squeezing his eyes closed and stilling his body in hopes of appearing asleep. Maybe they’d finally come to the conclusion that they didn’t like him anymore?

Who is it? Dox strains his ears and concludes it’s Immortal from the way his steps come up to the bed, loud and bold, yet he’s trying not to make noise and ‘wake’ him up.

The gesture makes Dox’s heart beat faster.

There’s a few moments where Immortal just stands over him in silence and Dox hopes to Ishmael and any other gods that his fake sleeping is convincing enough to fool the other. It seems it is, because Immortal sighs and twists on his heel, leaving the room just as quickly as he’d entered.

Dox’s shoulders slump, body he didn’t even know had been strung like a bow relaxing, almost melting into the covers.

If he can get a few hours more to pretend they still love him before they take it away from him, he’ll take it. Faking sleep had never been all that hard anyway. But now that Immortal had left without a single word or action, Dox feels like he’d been robbed of all the energy he’d had.

He wishes he could have either of their arms around himself now — because wishing for both would be way too much when he can’t have either. He wishes he could feel lips against his own, robbing him of breath and making him feel light headed. He wishes for ever curious fingers making him feel like he’s interesting, like he’s worth it.

Bile forces its way up his throat and he desperately swallows it down around the lump lodged there. The corners of his eyes sting no matter how hard he forces them shut, even when there’s colors dancing across the darkness.

He feels pathetic for crying over something so obvious, something he’d expected, but the tears are there nonetheless, rolling down his cheeks and staining the pillow with both normal and dark drops.

Ugly sobs tear from his lips, and through them, he doesn’t even hear the door opening again. He’s startled by a hand placed on his shoulder, shaking him softly.

Through blurry eyes he can see Immortal kneeling next to the bed, but not much else. His voice is soft and quiet, as if he’s placating a scared animal. Honestly, is Dox anything else? “Dox, what’s wrong? C'mon, talk to me, what happened?”

Dox’s heart pangs at the thought that Immortal feels like he has to calm him. He raises a hand up to his face, furiously wiping the tears away, though the results are dubious.

“I’m fine,” he says, pushing himself upright.

“That is such bullshit,” Immortal scoffs, reaching out to brush a thumb over Dox’s cheek, “Half your face is black!”

Dox chuckles, pushing Immortal’s hand away with one of his. “Sorry.”

“What’re you apologizing for?! For El’s sake, Dox, what happened?”

Dox flinches away as Immortal raises his voice, almost unconsciously. Immortal’s expression drops at that and he grits his teeth, angry at himself for letting himself go like that. Dox doesn’t like shouting, he really, really doesn’t.

Dox contemplates going back and saying something else, something that wouldn’t make Immortal angry, but then he thinks back to the failed attempts of not reaching this conclusion and decides against it. He would just mess up in a different way, probably.

“You don’t have to pretend to care about me anymore,” he says, looking down at the bunched blanket between them, hanging halfway off the bed. It’s suddenly so interesting, the way the thin purple lines bunch and move over and under the folds. “I already figured out that you were just waiting for the right time to tell me.”

Immortal stares at him in silence for long minutes, fiery gaze burning right through Dox. Then, he stands up, and Dox thinks this is it, he’s gonna turn around and leave. But he doesn’t.

“How did you get to that conclusion?” Immortal asks, his voice steady even though inside he feels nothing but steady. He wants to cry and scream and hold Dox close until he stops thinking such stupid things.

“You don’t like touching me anymore. I guess you thought you were sneaky, but it was pretty obvious you didn’t want to have sex with me anymore.” Dox laughs, eyes looking through the sheets, somewhere far away. It’s easier to talk about when he’s making fun of it. “And then you stopped kissing me, and I just wasn't… Well, you’ve made it kinda obvious once I looked at the whole picture! I was actually surprised when you touched my cheek just now, haha!”

Tears prick the corners of his eyes but he refuses to let them fall this time. At least not before Immortal leaves.

“Dox…” Immortal breathes out, as if beyond words. And he is; does his lover think they don’t… love him anymore? “Dox, listen to me, I love you—  _we_ love you! We never stopped, and we never will!”

Immortal’s knees hit the mattress on either side of Dox and he leans down to wrap long arms around Dox’s small form. The time traveler simply slumps in the hold, tears rolling down his cheeks once more, despite how hard he’d tried to stop them. He laughs shakily. “What are you doing?”

“Dox, I’m sorry,” Immortal mutters into his ear, close enough to do that, “I didn’t think you’d… think something like that. I love you, I truly do.”

Dox sniffs, a gross sound that should’ve deterred anyone, but Herrscher enters the room instead, taking in their tangled state. “Why don’t you like being with me anymore then?”

“That’s not it, Dox! It’s just that you l—”

“Herrsh? Could I get a kiss?” Dox asks, cutting him off with a another sniffle. Herrscher looks at Immortal first, slowly puzzling it out in his mind, and then he leans down and presses his lips to Dox’s forehead for a split moment.

Herrscher only ever does what Immortal does. Dox fights more tears, though his voice is wavering.

“See? That— that wasn’t a romantic kiss… That was a ’ _will you leave me alone if I do this?_ ’ kiss,” he mumbles.

Herrscher looks at Immortal, brows furrowing. “It was?”

“No!” Immortal huffs, placing both hands on to Dox’s shoulders. “Listen to me for a sec?”

Dox’s face looks ten shades of pain at that moment, eyes watery with the unshed tears, and Immortal feels like punching a wall right then. Maybe later.

“We,” he says, slowly, to make his point even clearer, “love. you. Shit, Dox, I didn’t think you were… Let me explain, it’s not that we don’t wanna touch you and kiss you, it’s just— it’s weird!”

“Weird?”

“You’re a kid! I’m not gonna fuck a kid! I’m not gonna shove my tongue into a kid’s mouth!” Immortal huffs, making a disgusted face, even holding out his tongue.

“I’m not a kid,” Dox says, “I’m like five years older than you.”

Immortal immediately looks offended, “You’re not!” he cries, “You’re like three and a half older at most. But still, you look like a kid and it just… feels weird, y'know.”

“So you don’t love me as much when I look like this?” Dox asks, trying to puzzle this whole thing out. He feels dumb, like he’d just been presented with a machine and told to reassemble it and he has no idea how.

“No! Where do you keep coming up with these dumb ideas! I swear, it’s like you’re not a genius at all,” Immortal grumbles, rolling his eyes.

Herrscher has made himself comfortable on the bed by then, wrapping his arms around Dox from behind and pulling the boy against his chest.

Immortal continues, bouncing on his knees just the tiniest bit. “It’s not more or less love, it’s just kind of different love? Like, what I just said. I don’t… wanna fuck you in this form, but it does make me wanna carry you around and hug you more, y'know?”

“Nuh-uh,” Dox shakes his head, brows furrowed.

“See, like that! That just makes me wanna squeeze you. You’re very squeezable in this form, by the way.”

This finally gets a chuckle out of the time traveler. “Thanks.”

Immortal’s smile falls into a serious expression again. He brushes the curly strands from Dox’s face, thumb rubbing soft, small lines into his cheek. “Dox. We love you. Really, we do. And by Ishmael if you need us to show you then we will, won’t we, Herrsh?”

Herrscher makes a non-committal, but vaguely affirmative hum, throat vibrating against Dox’s shoulder.

“So I can get a kiss if I switch forms?” Dox asks, swallowing. A ball of… — what, shame? self hate? insecurity? — had lodged itself deep in his stomach, weighing him down and making his gut twist painfully. It almost feels like he wants to puke. It’s honestly surprising that his voice doesn’t break more than it does. “A— a proper one?”

Immortal looks wrecked as the words leave Dox’s dry lips, eyes shouting a vehement 'goddess, sorry!’ He looks guilty. “As many as you want, Dox, I swear, I…”

Pink light floods the room and Immortal is a little glad for the timing, unsure where his ramble had been heading. Dox’s tiny frame faded with the light, a bigger one left in its place, lithe limbs tucked uncomfortably between them and long strands of hair falling limbly in his face as he hangs his head. For whatever reason Immortal can’t figure out, Dox is trying to make himself appear smaller, shoulders tensed and back bent.

He’s shivering between them, just like a leaf.

Immortal’s heart breaks at the sight; what did Dox think would happen now? That they would tell him they didn’t want him in his true form either? What a joke.

Except he knows that’s right, and the knowledge makes him want to cry. They’d really screwed up. Or, more accurately, he had. Because Herrscher used him as a guide, wasn’t sure about feelings or human emotions or anything, so anything he did was right in the celestial’s book. Sometimes that knowledge was off-putting.

He raised a shaky hand to Dox’s cheek again, hooking a finger under his chin to gently tilt his head up. Dox’s face is a mess and he refuses to look Immortal in the eyes.

Immortal rubs under his eye with a thumb, over the very prominent dark circles he wishes weren’t there. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, watching Dox’s eyebrows do a dance under his bangs, unsure what position to land in.

All he manages is a small nod.

Immortal leans in, only hesitating a split second mere hair breadths away from Dox, and presses his lips to Dox’s in a soft, tender kiss. He can almost taste the whimper that leaves Dox’s throat, dying somewhere on his tongue. The kiss itself tastes of salt, dried tears clinging to Dox’s lips; Immortal wishes they hadn’t been there in the first place.

Dox’s arms come up to grip at his shirt, fingers trembling and knuckles turning white from the force with which he fists the fabric. He clutches at Immortal like he’s a last lifeline before the doom of an endless sea.

Herrscher holds him close in turn, peppering kisses along the scar peeking from beneath his long hair. He can feel the way Dox’s heart pounds like a hummingbird trying to escape a cage.

The scene feels a bit more than a little bizarre, but none of them mind at the moment. Dox sniffles and rests his head against Immortal’s collarbone. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t trust his voice not to betray him.

“Hey,” Herrscher breaks the silence, squeezing Dox’s torso the tiniest amount. “We love you, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” Dox mutters into Immortal’s shirt. He trembles between them.

“Why’re you sorry? It’s okay, c'mon.”

There’s a beat of silence and then Dox shoves his face into his hands, Immortal’s shirt and all. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Herrscher opens his mouth, brows drawn together in confusion, but Immortal shakes his head. “You’re forgiven,” he says softly, running a hand through Dox’s hair, carding it through the silky locks. He doesn’t know what Dox is apologizing for, but obviously it means a lot to him. “It’s okay now, I promise.”

Herrscher gently guides Dox’s chin to the side so he can also kiss him. “Love you,” he says, pressing his cheek to Dox’s.

Dox reaches to Immortal, tugging on his shirt a little as if to bring him closer, but it’s nowhere near strong enough to do that. It’s the first such thing he’d done all day. He looks at Immortal like a kicked puppy, cheeks red and puffy from all the crying. “Hold me?” he asks — begs — and something within Immortal breaks. “Please…?” Dox whispers, looking ready to cry again when Immortal doesn’t move for a second too long.

He makes up for it by flinging himself forward, encasing Dox in his arms, smushing Herrscher’s between himself and Dox. The time traveler hiccups a sob between them, but they just hold him closer, a messy and wet sandwich of misery and love.

Immortal’s mind races as Dox slowly calms down, slumped in their hold and ready to pass out at any second. He wants to make it up to him; Dox deserves at least that much. He hadn’t even realized his behavior would make him feel like this, the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind with how much he adores his lover, but that doesn’t mean it hadn’t.

He can already tell Dox is not going to want to change from this form for a while at least. Usually, even unconsciously, he’d shift into the smaller form when going to bed, but right now he’s exactly as solidly big and lanky as ever. Immortal feels sick when the realization dawns on him that they might’ve tainted the form Dox had used to feel better in with bad emotions.

He’ll make it up to him. He’s not sure how, but damned be Elrios if he doesn’t.


End file.
